The first Sunday of each month, WRTI broadcasts a special Sunday Classical focused on new releases. Join host Mark Pinto on WRTI on May 3 from 3-6 p.m. for a special Independence Day broadcast, in which he will feature a number of albums connected to America's 250th anniversary. His picks are detailed below.
America/Beautiful
Min Kwon (piano), Graeme Steele Johnson (clarinet), Brian Hong (violin), Yoon Kwon Costello (violin), Siwoo Kim (violin), Andy Lin (viola), Nan-Cheng Chen (cello), Stephen Costello (tenor)
Pianist and Curtis Institute alum Min Kwon encapsulates the spirit of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations in this project. She commissioned 76 American-born composers and foreign-born composers now living in the U.S. to create short piano compositions inspired by the patriotic song, “America the Beautiful.” The result is a sonic portrait of the nation, questioning and reimagining the American experiment.
An American Dream?
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Barbara Hannigan (conductor)
Versatile Canadian musician Barbara Hannigan conducts, sings, and composes for this album of American music that mixes nostalgia and memory with an underlying darkness. On the program is a suite from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess; Aaron Copland’s Dance Symphony, which reuses music he wrote for a ballet about a vampire-like sorcerer; “The Carousel Waltz” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, Carousel; and a vocal-orchestral suite, At the Fair, composed by Hannigan in collaboration with American jazz musician and arranger Bill Elliott.
We The People
Apollo Chamber Players, Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Chorale, Kenneth Morris, Jr. (narrator), Penelope Campbell (soprano), Elizabeth Tait (alto), Wayne Ashley (tenor), Keaton Brown (baritone), Tracy Silverman (electric violin), Whitney Bullock (viola), John Holiday (countertenor), Ella Sharpe (double bass), Kenneth Gayle (tenor), Tonya Burton (viola)
For the nation’s 250th birthday, the Apollo Chamber Players celebrate American voices from across cultures, eras, and communities and “reflect the dimensions of American democracy.” This collaborative effort with several outstanding vocalists and instrumentalists features world premiere recordings of works by Haitian-American Daniel Bernard Roumain, African-American John Cornelius, and Afghan-American Homayoun Sakhi alongside a string quartet/choir arrangement of Howard Hanson’s 1957 Song of Democracy and a reimagining of the famous Allegretto from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony for string quartet and electric violin.
John Williams & “The President’s Own”
The United States Marine Band, John Williams (conductor)
The beloved composer and conductor is captured with an ensemble whose history rivals that of America itself. Established by Congress on July 11, 1798, the United States Marine Band is the oldest professional musical organization in the U.S. Marking the ensemble’s anniversaries in 2003 and 2008, John Williams conducted special arrangements of his well-known film music in these previously unreleased live concert recordings from the Kennedy Center.
Korngold & Barber
Paul Huang (violin), London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jun Märkl (conductor)
Award-winning Taiwanese-American violinist Paul Huang stars in two American concertos that are at-once modern while echoing the spirit of the late Romantic era – Samuel Barber’s 1939 masterpiece and that from 1945 by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the Austrian-born composer who fled oppression to establish a new life as an American citizen and Hollywood film composer.
Antonin Dvořák: Symphony No. 9; Carlos Simon: Four Black American Dances
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Manfred Honeck (conductor)
The Black experience in America is reflected in these two works recorded in concert by the Pittsburgh Symphony from their home at Heinz Hall. First is Dvořák's iconic Symphony No. 9 in E minor, "From the New World", inspired by African-American spirituals as well as Native American and Czech melodies. Juxtaposed is Carlos Simon’s 2023 Four Black American Dances, focusing on dances arising from the social climate of American slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow.
Barber: Vanessa
Nicole Heaston (soprano), J'Nai Bridges (mezzo-soprano), Matthew Polenzani (tenor), Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Thomas Hampson (baritone), National Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda (conductor)
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1958, Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti’s compelling and haunting operatic tale of desire across generations gets a refreshing new outing with an exceptional cast of vocalists. Recorded in concert last year at the Kennedy Center, Nicole Heaston, J’Nai Bridges, Matthew Polenzani, Susan Graham, and Thomas Hampson shine in Barber’s atmospheric, emotionally charged, and distinctly American score.
Adorations
Isidore String Quartet
The Juilliard-formed, competition and prize-winning Isidore String Quartet plays pieces which offer individually their own expression of wonder, reverence, and the profound beauty of shared musical experience. Together with works by Haydn and Mendelssohn are quartets by 20th century American composers – the celebrated Molto Adagio movement from Samuel Barber’s Op. 11 Quartet and a string quartet arrangement of Florence Price’s tender Adoration.
Deep River
Miclen LaiPang (violin), Nigel Yandell (piano)
Hailed as “a force to be reckoned with,” rising American violinist Miclen LaiPang offers a very personal recital program of music both meaningful to him and that has accompanied him through his career thus far. Partnered by British pianist Nigel Yandell, LaiPang traces a path through African American spirituals, waltzes from Richard Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier, Maurice Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2, and gems by Amy Beach, Clarence Cameron White, and Felix Borowski.
Copland: Symphony No. 3 – Walker: Sinfonia No. 5, 'Visions'
London Symphony Orchestra, Antonio Pappano (conductor)
Two American symphonic works – one looking toward brighter horizons, the other looking back in anger – constitute this concert recording from the London Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor Antonio Pappano. Completed in 1946 in the aftermath of World War II, Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony is a vast, sweeping work culminating in a triumphant finale of hope for the future. In extreme contrast, the final work of George Walker, his Sinfonia No. 5 “Visions”, is an unrelenting protest against racial violence, composed as a tribute to the victims of the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, SC.
Hourglass
Simone Dinnerstein (piano), Baroklyn
Through recordings and concerts over the past eight years, acclaimed American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has displayed a natural affinity with the music of eminent American minimalist, Philip Glass. With Baroklyn, her string-based New York ensemble, Dinnerstein presents two Glass compositions: the “Tirol” Piano Concerto (2000), and an arrangement for piano, strings, harp, and celesta of music from his Oscar-nominated score to the 2002 film, The Hours. Musical layers and motifs in constant, subtle transformation are the hallmarks of Glass’s style in this beguiling music.
Forward Into Light
Metropolis Ensemble, Noël Wan (harp), Andrew Cyr (conductor)
This release makes for a welcome introduction to the music of Princeton, NJ native Sarah Kirkland Snider. She’s been making waves on the new music scene with works that borrow frequently from indie rock and popular music idioms and has been called “perhaps the most sophisticated of voices” within the indie-classical movement. Listeners can appreciate these new sonorities in this album of four orchestral compositions played by an ensemble renowned for their collaborations with a new, often genre-defying generation of composers and performers.
